The inventive concept relates to semiconductor devices. More particularly, the inventive concept relates to semiconductor devices including cylindrical structures having a high aspect ratio and supports for supporting the cylindrical structures as the devices are being manufactured.
As semiconductor memory devices have become more highly integrated, the “footprint” of a unit memory cell (area that the unit memory cell occupies) has been remarkably reduced and an operation voltage of the semiconductor memory devices has become relatively low. One example of such a semiconductor memory device is a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device having cell capacitors. However, one potential drawback of scaling down a DRAM device is that the capacitance that each cell capacitor can provide may become smaller. Reductions in capacitance compromises the reliability of the DRAM devices, e.g., may lead to higher soft error rates. Thus, techniques aimed at maximizing the cell capacitance, within a given unit area, have been developed to realize highly integrated high performance DRAM devices. One of these techniques is to form cylindrical lower electrodes (e.g., cylindrical storage node electrodes), constituting the cell capacitors, with a high aspect ratio. However, cylindrical lower electrodes that have a high aspect ratio are likely to tilt or tip over during the manufacturing process and, in particular, before a dielectric layer is formed to consolidate the lower electrodes.